Love and respect: excerpt from the misogynist book popular among US Christians (more than 2m copies sold)

[CForCake]

In another post I said that the fact that the book Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs , very popular in American Evangelical circles, sold more than 2 million copies is a sign of how pervasive misogyny is in US Christianity, since one of the key messages of the book is that godly wives submit obey and let their husbands fuck them whenever they want. I was accused of misunderstanding the book, so I figured I'd post an excerpt from the chapter on sexuality, so that people can judge for themselves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SEXUALITY—APPRECIATE HIS
DESIRE FOR SEXUAL INTIMACY

The doctor and his wife did not have a happy marriage. They were on a Crazy
Cycle, and it centered on her ultimatum, which she had laid down several years
before. She would not respond to him sexually until he met her emotional needs.
She wanted emotional release, she wanted him to talk to her face to face, and
until he met her emotional needs, she wouldn’t respond to him sexually. After
all, that’s what love was all about, wasn’t it?
Then, through a series of events, the Lord spoke to her and said, “Who is
supposed to be the mature one here? He is a new believer and you’ve been in
Christ for many years.” She got the message. She decided to minister to her
husband sexually, not because she particularly wanted to, but because she
wanted to do it as unto Jesus Christ. She didn’t have that need for sex. It wasn’t
within her, but she realized that this was her husband’s need, and the Lord had
spoken to her about meeting his need first.
So she said, “All right, Lord, I will serve him and I will meet that need
gladly.” And she proceeded to do so. So what happened? Did her need for
emotional release and talking face to face ever get met? She reported back to me,
“When we lay there in bed afterward, I couldn’t get him to shut up!”
[…]

The second aspect of being able to appreciate your husband’s sexual desire for
you is that he needs sexual release just as you need emotional release

(intimacy).
In 1 Corinthians 7:5, Paul writes: “Stop depriving one another, except by
agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come
together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of selfcontrol.”
When it comes to our sexuality, both husband and wife need to meet
each other’s needs. Paul says each is to fulfill his or her duty to the other.
Husbands, particularly, can come under satanic attack when deprived of sexual
release. Wives might be able to better understand this if they think about how
they would feel if their husbands didn’t want to talk or listen to them. Being
deprived of emotional release would make most women miserable.

A young woman told the following story to Sarah after one of our conference
sessions. Every Sunday she and her husband would visit her parents, but one
Sunday morning she called her mother and said, “We’re not coming.” The
mother asked, “Why not?”
“Well, because my honey is in a twit,” the daughter said.
“Why?” inquired the mother.
“I suppose because we have not been sexually intimate for seven days.”
Mom did not hesitate; gently but firmly she let her daughter have it. “You
ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why would you deprive him of something that
takes such a short amount of time and makes him soooooo happy!?”
Embarrassed, the daughter shouted into the phone, “Mother! I can’t believe
you said that.” But as the young woman finished relating the story to Sarah, she
added, “My mom has been married for forty-seven years, and I don’t know
anyone who has a happier marriage.”
This mother gave her daughter good advice, indeed. Sadly, many couples
revolve on the Crazy Cycle because without sex he feels disrespected and reacts
in an unloving “twit,” and she dismisses him as childish. Round and round they
go! But it doesn’t have to be. Sarah says it best in our marriage conferences:
“Wives, what if your husband didn’t talk to you for three days . . . three weeks . .
. or three months? You would think that abominable. I think you get my point.
Some wives want their emotional needs met after marriage but somehow lose
sight of their husband’s sexual needs. Remember, your son will have the same
need. How do you want your daughter-in-law to treat him? Your son didn’t ask
to be made this way any more than your daughter or daughter-in-law asked to be
made with the need to talk intimately on a regular basis!”

"Husbands, particularly, can come under satanic attack when deprived of sexual
release."

Most of them don't even have to be deprived of "sexual release" to chase a bit on the side.

Look, if you go onto the boards here, and say your husband is no longer interested in sex, and ask if you are expected to accept a sexless relationship, you will be told that barring some kind of health issue that maybe can be addressed, you should get a divorce. It's not reasonable for him to expect you to go without sex long term What that means is, if he doesn't want to divorce, he has to have sex for the good of the marriage.

Books like this are a very differernt context and language than educated atheistic Brits are used to, but they are addressing a common issue across the board in marriages; what are the expectations and responsibilities when a couple have differernt levels of sexual desire. The expectation in these communities is that it is not the kind of issue you divorce over, if you've married, sex is normally going to be a part of the relationship. And that should be an expectation of both partners.

That's historically been a fairly common Christian position, in some places in the middle ages you could sue your spouse on the grounds of lack of sex (and these suits were sometimes sucessful from wives as well as husbands.) There was also an expectation, and this is also true in modern American evangelical communities, that if sex was impossible for health or other serious reasons, divorce was still not an option and celibacy was the only approved way forward.

I don't know if you are very young, or just very lucky, but the idea that in a long term marriage no one will ever have sex in service to the needs of their spouse, or marriage, is I think quite naive. It happens in most good, long standing relationships, in modern, secular contexts. Negotiating that as an individual and as a couple can be tricky, and it's really not shocking that it would be an issue of interest to all kinds of people. Even 2 million American Christians who don't think divorce is solution except in very serious circumstances.

This kind of nonsense just makes me glad to be single. Women don’t even need men anymore. Not financially, and not emotionally (friends and a dog will do). I DON’T need to trade sex for listening and talking privileges.

@TempestTost if you go onto the boards here, and say your husband is no longer interested in sex, and ask if you are expected to accept a sexless relationship, you will be told that barring some kind of health issue that maybe can be addressed, you should get a divorce.

When the woman isn't getting sex from her man, yes. When the roles are reversed, the man is a sexpest etc etc

Look, I am not saying that sex is not important, nor that anyone should accept a sexless marriage. Absolutely not.

I am saying that the book frames the conversation as if HIS needs were always more important. The subtitle to the chapter mentions understanding HIS needs.
Read the excerpt again. The message is not: why is she not in the mood? Can she make him understand why she is not in the mood? Can the couple meet halfway? Can she make him understand what he is doing wrong?

No.
The message is that husbands who don't get laid "come under satanic attack"
The message is that wives must open their legs, always and regardless

Once you contextualise this into the US Evangelical world, it can get scary.
There are books and courses to teach wives how to submit to and obey the husband
There are manuals which say that of course this doesn't mean accepting abuse, BUT if he misbehaves you must talk to your pastor (NOT the authorities)

There are plenty of books and documentaries on ex-evangelicals and on religious trauma. In the US there are therapists who specialise in religious trauma and in helping people rebuild their lives after leaving these groups

This books does seem to be clearly directed to women. There are others for men with a differernt emphasis.

And yes, these kinds of ideas can certainly be abused. However - I have so far not found any ideological perspectives where this is not the case.

You seem to have this idea that this is peculiar to religious perspectives. But look around at the non-religious people of the west - are they particularly free for ideological beliefs that are exploitative? To women or other people more generally? I'd say no, that modern secular beliefs around sex are fairly frequently twisted into exploitative belief systems, advice, and customs with regards to dating, marriage, and sex.

You can find whole books on these topics that sell a heck of a lot more than 2 million copies.

@TempestTost You seem to have this idea that this is peculiar to religious perspectives.

??? What makes you say that? I am well aware that there are plenty of dogmatic ideologies and groups which are not religious.

I point out an issue with certain religious ideologies. And you reply that there are bad non-religious ideologies, too. Yes, and? That's cheap whataboutery.

Worth bearing in mind that there's a long-established plausibly-deniable funding tactic in the US of having a nonprofit of some kind buy masses of an ally or protegés book then handing them out as gifts or prizes. That way eg; evil Hedge Fund LLC can't be directly linked to your income, you've made it all yourself by selling your splendid tome & nobody need know that EHFLLC provided the cash for most of them, with their chums, Also Evil Hedgefund LP & Most Evil Hedgefund Co funding the bulk of the rest,.
Which is all to say that 2 million in sales may be very far from a readership of 2 million.

What you're advancing here is a version of "but other kids are doing it", a failure of argument.

@HildegardP That's a good point on financiers buying bulk copies, but this specific book has been around for 20 years, it is recommended reading in many Christian colleges, Bible study groups, etc. It is ubiquitous in Christian libraries, so the people who will have read the book or at least excerpts from it in study sessions etc may well be more than 2 millions

Aren't we the reason men fell from god's grace, and the source of his sin? It's hardly surprising that a book written out of that tradition includes misogynistic bullshit.

Mind you, is it bullshit? I'll quite often give my husband a hand job when he's horny and I'm not. It's not exactly a revelation that women can keep their men happy with sex. Or maybe it is, maybe some repressed couples need to read it in a book.

I was exposed to a fair bit of stuff like that in my yoof. Yet here I am, a feminist atheist. I knew people who'd been through exclusively evangelical education, the ones who stay in their communities & never peep outside might take it all to heart but "to err is human, to forigve divine" comes in handy even there
Your average evangelical-raised adult has a lot of other takes available to them now & the "surrendered wife" is perhaps more present in the media than in the home. Who could forget the abject failure of the Purity Pledge era? Inadequate men enjoy saying this stuff, they're like Andrew Tates with Bibles, but how far it actually applies IRL is another matter.

@VoodooQualities I'll quite often give my husband a hand job when he's horny and I'm not.

And that's great, if you choose to do so freely.

It's not great, if you were indoctrinated since primary school that your duty as a godly wife is to submit to and obey your husband, to satisfy his sexual urges, and that if he hits you because you deny him sex you should talk to your pastor but not to the authorities.

It's one thing to tell women: ladies, sex is much more important for your husbands than it is for you. I remember an interview to a trans man who said that she knew men are hornier and that male hormones would have increased her desires, but she had no idea by how much and that at times she felt it uncontrollable.

It's quite another to say the same thing in the context of a high control religion which considers his needs more important than hers.

You won't get any arguments from me about whether religion is bad for women, especially of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Then sprinkle on top some of that American sexual repression, their tendency towards self-righteousness and their belief they're the greatest nation on earth... I'm very glad I'm not part of any of it.

I'm surprised you're getting pushback on a feminist forum to be honest.

It would be a massive surprise if you didn't find misogyny in fundamental christianity since it exists everywhere else in society. I have been shocked by the overwhelming misogyny of trans rights, porn, surrogacy, domestic abuse, male violence, rape, grooming gangs but also women talking about workplace situations where they are ignored (the latest being at the BBC.) I hope a reckoning is coming on all fronts but I have come to realise women will always have to fight for their rights. It will never be settled.

No, I am saying that between this and the other thread, the OPs concerns are so off-kilter as to indicate either a real failure of observation, or some kind of agenda.

A warning about Christians wanting ro remove women's right to vote, something completely niche not only among Americans, but American evangelicals, that you'd be hard pressed to find people saying this if it weren't for the internet? A viewpoint that has no one in the actual government or opposition, who is advocating anything like that? A 20 year old book, with a niche audience, which we've been given a few select quotes from? Most evangelical women vote btw.

And yet who are the people advocating for men being able to self identify as women, the state of being a women being a kind of submissive costume, men in women's prisons, men in women's sports, surrogacy, pornography is great, sex work is great, etc? Gosh, it's the secular media, the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Lib Dems, the Democrats in the US, the Liberals and Greens in Canada, Humanists, the Skeptc movement, the BBS, CBC, and PBS, the European courts, the Canadian courts, Amnesty international.

Christians, in general, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, have overall stood against most or all of those things, as being exploitative and against women's human dignity. The most secular and mainsrteam, like the C of E, have been the most likely to not support women in these areas.

But what we really need to guard against is American evangelicals removing women's right to vote?

"Christianity is a problem" seems like pretty manipulative framing.

@TempestTost Yours is cheap whataboutery. What prompted me to make those two posts is the recent report by the National Secular Society and religion and misogyny.

You will notice I have not ranked the issues in order, I have not said which is the most and the least pressing.

Your approach is like saying that I shouldn't talk, I don't know, about a woman hit in Leeds, because more women get killed in London, so murders in London are a bigger problem. It's nonsense!!

Help me understand: who sets the threshold of things which can be discussed? You? A committee of like-minded people? What are the criteria? I cannot mention an issue unless... it affects how many people? 1? 100? 1000? 1 million?

Saying that something happened doesn't imply that that something is the most pressing issue for all; but the fact that it's not the most pressing issue for all doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, either.

Also, that is not just a 20-year old book - it's a book which has sold more than 2 million copies and which has been forced down women's throat for 20 years.

Have you read Sarah Stankorb’s: Dis-obedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning ?
sarahstankorb.com/disobedient-women

Once you read about abuse in American Evangelical communities, that book starts to take a whole different meaning. Can we talk about abuse in Evangelical communities? Do I have your permission? Please? Pretty please?

Christians have opposed some of the things you oppose because they clash with their interpretation of human dignity. But remember that most Christians still oppose same-sex marriage. The Church of England still does. The Catholics oppose contraception. Most Christians oppose abortion.
Many Evangelicals in the US still think that a woman's dignity means shutting up and opening her legs.
So don't talk to me about Christians and women's dignity, please. Thank you.

Christians have opposed some of the things you oppose because they clash with their interpretation of human dignity. But remember that most Christians still oppose same-sex marriage. The Church of England still does. The Catholics oppose contraception. Most Christians oppose abortion.
And yet all those things have become legal in the last 50 years in the UK. So their block vote isn't having much effect on society is it?

Is this Mumsnet's feminism board, or an Evangelical subreddit?

Same-sex marriage was legalised in the UK only in 2013.
The archbishop of Canterbury voted against.

"Promoting homosexuality" was illegal till 2003.

Take rights for granted, and you end up like in the US, where the right to abortion is being taken away, often even when little girls are raped.

I don't understand your point. Is it that, once a battle is won, we should lower our guard and stop thinking about it? May I remind you that Anglicans and Catholics continue to oppose the very concept of same-sex marriage, even today?

Or is it that we should talk only about what happens in the UK and not in other countries?

Can you please clarify? Thank you.

The last line about "think about what you'd want for your son" 🤢

@EmeraldSloth I once remember reading an ex-evangelical saying how older women told the younger handmaids women to buy plenty of lube, so as to comply more easily with their godly duty to let the husbands fuck them even when they don't want to. But, according to some people here, mentioning this stuff is "manipulative"

I understand men buying into this stuff.
But the psychological mechanism whereby women become enablers of more abuse against other women, that I do not understand. I would love to hear what psychologists have to say.

Some Christians argued against same sex marriage so did some gay people.
I take none of my rights lightly and that includes freedom of thought and speech. Your posts have the whiff of the pitchfork about them.
The Secular society thread which I started was agreeing with the call to stop funding religious charities which preach against women's rights.
What exactly do you want, removing Christians from public office?? Banning Christians from standing as MPs? Banning Evangelical sects as terror groups?
Personally I am more concerned with the prosecution of crimes against women and girls and legislation regarding misogyny on the Internet, laws regarding prostitution, surragacy and pornography.
I cannot in all conscience call for freedom of speech and then deny it to others.
Militant atheism in Russia was a key ideological and policy stance of the Soviet Union from roughly 1925 to 1947, most notably promoted by the League of Militant Atheists. This movement involved an uncompromising, anti-religious attitude to dismantle religious institutions and beliefs through propaganda, confiscation of religious property, and the suppression of clergy. It was based on the Communist Party's view that religion was an obstacle to creating a rational, socialist society and promoted a system of "scientific atheism" as the sole scientific truth. others.
I am an atheist as I've said just one that recognises religion like all other human belief systems have done some good as well as bad. Therefore not militant.

My opinion is that religious beliefs shouldn't prohibit someone from running for MP - but there should be strict rules about the extent to which those beliefs influence voting.

MPs are elected to represent their constituents - which includes people from all religious backgrounds as well as those without any religious beliefs.

Take the assisted dying bill as an example, the debate was massively skewed by MPs who couldn't see past their religious objections. A bit of a tangent from the original post, but I don't think it should be controversial to say that politics should be free from religious interference, in the same way it should be free from commercial interference.

@Imnobody4 What exactly do you want, removing Christians from public office?? Banning Christians from standing as MPs? Banning Evangelical sects as terror groups?

You are starting to sound unhinged.
Please, please, pretty please, can you please kindly explain what makes you say that? Can you either explain how you have reached this conclusion, or apologise for having put horrible words in my mouth?

I cannot in all conscience call for freedom of speech and then deny it to others.

Again, whose freedom of speech would I have denied,, and how? EXPLAIN OR APOLOGISE!

Militant atheism in Russia was a key ideological and policy stance of the Soviet Union from roughly 1925 to 1947, most notably promoted by the League of Militant Atheists

While other atheists and agnostics fiercely opposed Communism (take Bertrand Russell). The problem is never religion or atheism per se, but dogma. Atheist dogma can be as dangerous as religious dogma and must be called out as such.

The difference is that atheism, unlike religion, is not a set of values, so if other atheists commit atrocities it's not on me. If instead religious people commit atrocities (how many fascists dictators were Christian? I think all of them?) then the religious should explain how come.

I am an atheist as I've said just one that recognises religion like all other human belief systems have done some good as well as bad. Therefore not militant.

So your definition of militant atheist is one who doesn't recognise that religion has also done some good? Where would I have denied that? Again, why do you keep putting words in my mouth? WHY????

@EmeraldSloth My opinion is that religious beliefs shouldn't prohibit someone from running for MP - but there should be strict rules about the extent to which those beliefs influence voting.

That's a slippery slope. If I were an MP I would be influenced by my humanist values. Is that OK? If that is OK, why should a religious person not be influenced by their religious values?

I would frame it differently, and I would say that religious approaches to morality are hard to share with those who don't share the same religion, because it's all so dogmatic that it's impossible to have a discussion. My God wants me to slaughter animals in a certain way. Your God says that killing animals is immoral. How do we settle that?

A key difference between humanists and theists is that theists all too often want to prohibit stuff which doesn't cause anyone any harm, just because they think their God doesn't like it.

But you cannot prevent religious MPs from voting based on their religious beliefs, that would be a totalitarian nightmare.